Kendra Little

Kendra is a DevOps Advocate at Redgate. She has taught developers and database administrators around the world to write fast, reliable code and to improve tempo and code quality in the software engineering lifecycle for databases.

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03 December 2020
03 December 2020

Why it makes sense to monitor SQL Server deadlocks in their own Extended Events trace

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We recently had customer ask why SQL Monitor creates an Extended Events session to capture deadlock graphs, when SQL Server has a built-in system_health Extended Events trace which also captures deadlock information? There are a couple of reasons why a dedicated trace is desirable for capturing deadlock graphs, whether you are rolling your own monitoring … Read more
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19 November 2020
19 November 2020

Database DevOps Considerations for SQL Server Availability Groups

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One question which comes up periodically from our Microsoft Data Platform customers is whether there is anything special that they need to do when implementing version control, continuous integration, and automated deployments for a production database which is a member of a SQL Server Availability Group.  The good news is that deployments are quite straightforward. … Read more
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16 November 2020
16 November 2020

Three ways that taking the State of Database DevOps Survey helps the community

Redgate has recently opened the 2021 State of Database DevOps Survey. Whether or not your organization does DevOps, I would love for you to take the survey. The survey will require around 15 minutes of your time, but I think it’s a great investment as it will benefit the whole community of database administrators, developers, and … Read more
27 October 2020
27 October 2020

Why database folks should care about User Research

I attended a training session at Redgate this week by Chris Spalton. Chris’ session topic was “An Introduction into Planning User Research.” Chris pointed out that there’s much more to User Research, but that planning the research is particularly important as it is the foundation for everything you do later. If you’re a database administrator … Read more
26 October 2020
26 October 2020

Reordering Deployments in Database DevOps

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We recently received an interesting question in our Redgate forums from Peter Daniels about altering the order of deployments in database DevOps. The question includes the following scenario: Developer A makes changes – feature 1.  This set of changes makes its way into the dev integration environment. Developer B makes changes – feature 2.  This … Read more
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17 August 2020
17 August 2020

The Two Ways Containers Will Revolutionize Database DevOps

Containers have already transformed the way application development works, but adoption has been slower for databases. Finally, the revolution is beginning. In this post, Kendra Little shares the two ways in which containers will dramatically change the way teams develop and deploy database changes.… Read more
26 June 2020
26 June 2020

Will We Still be Talking About DevOps in Two Years?

While individual buzzwords will come in and out of fashion, the ideas at the heart of DevOps aren’t going anywhere.  Like any good buzzword, DevOps may mean different things to different people. There are several good definitions of DevOps out there. My favorite definition comes from @IanColdwater, who defined DevOps in terms a teenager would understand: Devops … Read more
24 September 2019
24 September 2019

SQL Server Management Studio is as Relevant as Ever

After fifteen years of heavy usage by developers and DBAs, it might seem like Microsoft’s free tool,  SQL Server Management Studio, is about to go out of style. SSMS is no longer the cool new kid on the block: Microsoft has shown consistent effort to develop their new tool,  Azure Data Studio  (formerly known as … Read more
12 March 2019
12 March 2019

Why You Shouldn’t Hardcode the Current Database Name in Your Views, Functions, and Stored Procedures

“There are only two hard things in Computer Science: cache invalidation and naming things” Phil Karlton I’m terrible at naming things. I recently wrote some quick code to reproduce a design problem and demonstrate several options for solutions, and later realized that I’d named my objects dbo.Foo, dbo.FooFoo, and dbo.Wat. But I feel strongly about … Read more
30 August 2018
30 August 2018

Security, Compliance, Data Ethics, and Breaking the “Not My Job” Mindset

Security, compliance, and data ethics are related concepts that everyone who works with software should know about, from the help desk to the C-level office… but almost everyone thinks that worrying about these things is someone else’s problem. As data breaches become increasingly common and data privacy regulations pass in more regions, there are increasing … Read more